The Price is Right for Price Optimization

Bob Barker

Have you seen the television game show, “The Price is Right?” Here’s a clip of a Double Showcase winner!

From the Wikipedia: “The Price Is Right” is an American game show centered on the pricing of merchandise to win cash and prizes. The current version of the show premiered on September 4, 1972 on CBS and was hosted by Bob Barker until his retirement on June 15, 2007. Drew Carey succeeded Barker at the beginning of Season 36 on October 15, 2007. TV Guide named “The Price Is Right” the “greatest game show of all time”. The show is well-known for its signature line of “Come on down!” when the announcer directs newly selected contestants to Contestants’ Row.

The original version of “The Price Is Right” aired from 1956–1965 and was hosted by Bill Cullen. While retaining some elements of the earlier generation show, the 1972 revival added many new distinctive gameplay elements, and now has the distinction of being the longest continuously running game show in United States television history, with more than 7,000 episodes aired.

I had a call today with a great group of sales executives discussing pricing. Pricing is a very interesting and important aspect of business, because it can literally make or break a business. There’s a big price for not getting the right price for goods and services that you buy and sell.

How do businesses fare in getting the right price for their products, as they play “The Price is Right” in the real world? It depends; some are good at it, some need coaching. Businesses can call a consultant, like phoning a friend on “Who Wants to be a Millionaire,” or they can rely on wisdom, knowledge, experience, and some analysis, like contestants on “Jeopardy.” They can also ask a computer, like the crew members on “Star Trek” do when they need information and analysis.

I broke my string of game shows with “Star Trek,” but isn’t the “Star Trek” crew’s method of getting an answer from comprehensive, granular, and rapid computer analysis combined with human thinking better than relying on a combination of guesswork, experience, some analysis, and intuition? I think so, and many businesses are in agreement as they begin to play hard ball with getting the price right using price optimization software. Space is the final frontier on “Star Trek,” and price optimization is one of the final frontiers of business intelligence.

Mimiran Sales Compass on-demand price optimization software

Price optimization software helps you segment customers and use historical customer pricing data to predict future outcomes and set a price that covers your costs, serves your customers, and keeps you in the game. It has the ability to analyze complex data sets from multiple systems and provide guidance in getting the price right.

According to this excellent post by Knowledge@Wharton, “The Price Is Right, but Maybe It’s Not, and How Do You Know?” businesses can increase margins by two to eight percent by using price optimization software. Also cited in the post is a 27 percent revenue gain on baby products at Duane Reade, a drugstore chain in New York City. Duane Reade altered the pricing on its baby products for parents of newborns and for parents of toddlers as a result of using price optimization software. “The data showed that parents of newborns are not as price-sensitive as parents of toddlers. In response, the company cut prices on toddler diapers to remain competitive with other stores and raised prices on diapers for infants.”

Price optimization is a hot area of business intelligence, which is high on the list of CIOs and analysts today. Cloud-based price optimization software from companies such as Mimiran make it easy to get up and running, because there’s no software to install and no servers to maintain. Just create an account online and you’re on your way to higher profit margins, which keeps your ship running like the Starship Enterprise and rings like a winning bell on “The Price is Right” in any business climate.

How much can you charge for your goods and services this year, and how much is that answer worth to you?

Martin Luther King and Cloud Computing

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was one of the greatest advocates for civil rights, freedom, human rights, democracy, and peace. It is great that we honor him and the difference he made on this day.

In San Francisco there is a Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial at Yerba Buena Gardens, which has several of his quotes translated into the languages of San Francisco’s 13 international sister cities, as well as African and Arabic dialects. You walk behind a waterfall to view the quotes; it is well worth a visit.

Perhaps King’s most famous event was the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which took place on August 28, 1963. He delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech there. From the Wikipedia: “The march made specific demands: an end to racial segregation in public school; meaningful civil rights legislation, including a law prohibiting racial discrimination in employment; protection of civil rights workers from police brutality; a $2 minimum wage for all workers; and self-government for Washington, D.C., then governed by congressional committee. Despite tensions, the march was a resounding success. More than a quarter million people of diverse ethnicities attended the event, sprawling from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial onto the National Mall and around the reflecting pool. At the time, it was the largest gathering of protesters in Washington’s history. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech electrified the crowd. It is regarded, along with Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Infamy Speech, as one of the finest speeches in the history of American oratory.”

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was involved in many social and political movements during the 1960s that remain with us today; during the same time, there was also a movement in the computer industry that is now revolutionizing our way of life as radically as the 1960s did. Timesharing, which is sharing computing resources among many users, was in its infancy in 1963. Check out this video, filmed at MIT in 1963, which explains timesharing. The link that timesharing and the present time share is that timesharing is one of the essential characteristics of cloud computing.

Cloud computing and social media are providing a new freedom of expression that reminds me of the 1960s. Just like King inspired the dreams of many in his “I Have a Dream” speech, social media allows the voices and dreams of so many more than ever to be heard, as this video about the explosion of social media shows. Just like King stood for democracy and freedom, cloud computing and social media are democratizing computing power, information access, the ability to be heard, and the ability to learn and understand.

Cloud computing is even doing its own march on Washington. President Obama likes and advocates it, and so does his CIO, Vivek Kundra. They don’t just advocate it; they implement it as shown in this post. States such as Michigan are following suit as the cloud-computing movement reverberates from Washington D.C. to states across the nation.

Just as the 1960s impacted corporate culture with increased flexibility, informality, and casual dress, cloud computing is beginning to impact business with increased flexibility, pay-as-you-go service agreements, and easy provisioning. “More business intelligence for more users for more decision empowerment” is the rallying cry of many CIOs today; that’s what 2,500 CIOs told IBM in this survey.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. helped us imagine and create a future that improved our relationships and interactions. Cloud computing and social media enable his visions to live on and our future to improve in ways he may have never dreamed possible.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:

• Was the image on Google’s homepage today
• Made the top 10 tweets on Twitter today
• Was viewed about 10 million times delivering his “I Have a Dream” speech on YouTube thus far
• Has more than 723,000 Facebook fans today

What are your dreams for empowering your company with accessible information and collaboration for 2010?

American Idol: Cloud Computing

Tonight I watched the inaugural broadcast of “American Idol,” auditioning in Boston for the 2010 season. I was amazed to see hundreds of hopefuls and their friends and families gathering in Gillette Stadium for a chance to be heard by audition professionals and maybe even by the judges themselves. It’s a great opportunity to jump-start a singing career.

Cloud computing reminds me just a little of winning “American Idol.” Cloud computing clearly rose to the top of IT media attention, analyst recommendations, business and IT awareness in 2009, and now it’s slated for a concert tour that will reverberate for decades. The winning artists include all cloud vendors, researchers, educators, analysts, journalists, bloggers, tweeters, investors, and ultimately IT professionals and end users who use the cloud-based instruments at their disposal to create stellar solutions and performances.

If you are going to audition thousands of singers nationwide and narrow the final competition to 36, you definitely need a vetting process. Similarly, due to the low barriers to entry provided by cloud computing itself (infrastructure and platform as a service), many new cloud-based solutions are entering the market and will be vetted.

Like the judges of “American Idol,” I'm delighted to showcase these winners:

• Enterprise mashup dashboards such as mashmatrix Dashboard provide rapid, personalized development of dashboards from any web-facing data source; get a complete view of all the information you need on one screen without having to switch between screens and applications.
• SaaS business intelligence (BI) applications from Birst and eiVia provide quick reporting and predictive analytics for decision-making.
• Enterprise relationship management solutions such as BranchIt help your business leverage relationships that colleagues may have with prospective customer or partner contacts.
• Price optimization applications from companies such as Mimiran help you avoid leaving money on the table in pricing your products or services.
• Enterprise brand management solutions from Biz360 aggregate, measure, and analyze news media and consumer opinion from print and social-media sources to yield insights that enable sales, marketing, PR, and executives to better understand their customers, competitors, influencer communities, industry trends and issues, the press, and the investment community.
• Enterprise cloud databases such as TrackVia help you quickly design and deploy cloud-based applications to solve business problems.
• Integration products from Pervasive Software and Sesame Software provide data exchange and interoperability between legacy on-premises and software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications.
• Cloud-based single sign-on systems from companies such as TriCipher provide a secure, single login for a user to access all authorized cloud-based applications.

What will be your vetting process for the many cloud solutions at your disposal? What types of stellar solutions do you want to create in the clouds this year?

Cloud Computing in Concert

Jeff Beck

Over the weekend I watched the 25th Anniversary of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Concerts and attended a jazz-rock fusion concert completely improvised by fusion masters Allan Holdsworth (guitar), Tony Levin (upright bass and Chapman Stick), Terry Bozzio (percussion), and Pat Mastelotto (percussion). The concerts were impressive in different ways.

The two Rock and Roll Hall of Fame concerts were amazing because they brought so many different and influential musicians together in two evenings at Madison Square Garden and in a single HBO broadcast. Here are a few examples:

• Jerry Lee Lewis
• Smokey Robertson
• Aretha Franklin
• Jeff Beck with Sting, Stevie Wonder, and Buddy Guy
• Crosby, Stills & Nash with Bonnie Raitt and Paul Simon
• Simon & Garfunkel performing together (a rare event)
• Metallica with Ozzie Osbourne
• U2 with Mick Jagger and Fergie
• Bruce Springsteen with Billy Joel

Here are set lists from day one and day two, from the New York Times ArtsBeat blog.

Holdsworth, Bozzio, Mastelotto, Levin
The jazz-rock concert was amazing because it was brilliantly improvised by four of the best fusion virtuosi. To get an idea of their skill on their instruments and at improvisation, watch this video.

Simon & Garfunkel

Getting musicians with so many commitments to play together is a little like getting your enterprise applications to display together; you can usually only see one or two on a screen. What if you were able to improvise a new screen to display data simultaneously from multiple applications, so that you and others in your company could see all the information you need to do your jobs on a single screen? That would have your business and your colleagues rocking with simultaneous, real-time information from all of your favorite applications for decision support, business performance monitoring, and customer service! No more switching between screens to get the information you need.

An enterprise mashup dashboard displaying data from six applications

All of your web-facing applications can play together on your screen using enterprise mashup dashboard products like mashmatrix Dashboard.  With mashmatrix, you can “improvise” dashboards as fast as you can drag and drop. That means that you can quickly personalize dashboards, giving users the information they want and need to see, on demand, live, and in one place. It’s like the ultimate concert of applications on your screen.

Bono, Fergie, Mick Jagger

What would be your ultimate concert? Which applications would you like to see performing together on your screen for improved efficiency, decision-making, business performance monitoring, and customer service?

The Pyramid to Business Success in the Cloud

This week I had the opportunity to prepare, present, and participate in sales-training sessions with an excellent, experienced group of enterprise IT sales professionals who are excited about the business goals that customers can achieve with enterprise cloud computing solutions.

Also this week, I found an excellent blog post by Justin Pirie about customer acquisition for software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies. Justin writes in his post about Sean Ellis’s startup pyramid, “the basic premise is that SaaS companies don’t put enough consideration into how they’re going to acquire customers when designing their product.” The foundation of Sean Ellis’s pyramid to business success is product/market fit and customer acquisition.

Enterprise cloud computing is certainly gaining acceptance due to its flexibility, rapid time to market, and cost-effectiveness. This and the low cost of starting a cloud company provide a positive environment for cloud start-ups. However, without product/market fit and an affordable way to scale sales as the foundation of their business strategy, SaaS start-ups and even more mature companies such as LucidEra will not remain in business.

Justin’s post was perfectly timed with our sales sessions. He also links to other excellent posts in his post. Enterprise SaaS sales executives are solving business problems for enterprise customers at a perfect time, when customers are looking for guidance for cloud products with product/market fit such as:

• Enterprise mashup dashboards such as mashmatrix Dashboard provide rapid, personalized development of dashboards from any web-facing data source; get a complete view of a customer or patient on one screen without having to switch between screens and applications.
• SaaS business intelligence (BI) applications from Birst and eiVia provide quick reporting and predictive analytics for decision-making.
• Enterprise relationship management solutions such as BranchIt help your business leverage relationships that colleagues may have with prospective customer or partner contacts.
• Price optimization applications from companies such as Mimiran help you avoid leaving money on the table in pricing your products or services.
• Enterprise brand management solutions from Biz360 aggregate, measure, and analyze news media and consumer opinion from print and social-media sources to yield insights that enable sales, marketing, PR, and executives to better understand their customers, competitors, influencer communities, industry trends and issues, the press, and the investment community.
• Enterprise cloud databases such as TrackVia help you quickly design and deploy cloud-based applications to solve business problems.
• Integration products from Pervasive Software and Sesame Software provide data exchange and interoperability between legacy on-premises and software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications.
• Cloud-based single sign-on systems from companies such as TriCipher provide a secure, single login for a user to access all authorized cloud-based applications.

What’s in your pyramid of business success with cloud-based solutions this year?

An Updated Collection of IT Predictions for 2010

Happy new year and happy new decade! Since I first compiled my collection of IT predictions for 2010 in mid-December, many more predictions for 2010 and retrospectives for 2009 came in. I thought it would be helpful to list the new ones in addition to the older ones that I compiled, so that you can see many more predictions and learn where IT may be heading in 2010, in one place. Re-use is okay in social media, right?

Here are the new predictions and retrospectives, in alphabetical order by media outlet, followed by many more in my initial post:

• Bank Information Security: Top 8 Security Threats of 2010 http://bit.ly/4KLGdJ
• BeyeNETWORK: Business Performance Management in 2010, Part 1 http://bit.ly/6JfA18
• Channel Insider: A Leaner IT to Get More Strategic in 2010 http://bit.ly/64BlCP
• ChannelWeb: The 10 Biggest Cloud Computing Stories Of 2009 http://bit.ly/7SyrQ5
• CIO: Software Development’s Winners and Losers, 2009 Edition http://bit.ly/5OIlvl
• CIO Insight: Cloud Computing, Mobility Gain Focus for 2010 – Research http://bit.ly/7G5xwL
• CIOL News Reports: Top Ten Cloud Computing Predictions for 2010  http://bit.ly/4zcaCW
• CNET News, The Open Road: 2010 the year of cloud-computing…M&A http://bit.ly/7zPlwj
• Computerworld: 6 hottest skills for 2010 http://bit.ly/8MMRqC
• Computerworld: 10 big cloud trends for 2010 http://bit.ly/8jJwKl
• Computerworld: Budget tips for the new year http://bit.ly/8oDzJE
• CSO Online: Ten 2010 IT Security Predictions, Part 2: http://bit.ly/4G9znS
• Dr. Dobb’s | What a Difference a Year Makes http://bit.ly/6025oF
• E-Commerce News: Top 10 Cloud Computing Flashpoints of 2009 http://bit.ly/7gp4tY
• E-Commerce News: Trends: 2010: The Year of Living Sustainably http://bit.ly/4uiG9G

• eWeek: Seven Ways to Make Your Security Budget Pay Off in 2010 http://bit.ly/4KAnnw
• eWeek: Symantec Discusses Security SAAS Plans for 2010 http://bit.ly/7HX3TF

• The Forrester Blog For Business Process & Applications Professionals – Advanced Analytics Predictions for 2010:  http://bit.ly/7y7fqL
• Gartner, Andrea DiMaio: A Year in Review: Top Ten for Government 2.0 in 2009 http://bit.ly/6SlOxx

• Global CIO: My 5 Favorite Cover Stories Of 2009 — InformationWeek http://bit.ly/62gNYT
• Global CIO: Oracle CEO Larry Ellison On The Future Of IT — InformationWeek http://bit.ly/8yMoDW
• Government Technology Year in Review: Cloud Computing Gains Government Foothold http://bit.ly/4×6wwQ
• Haut Tech » SaaS: 10 Trends for 2010 http://bit.ly/6g1sZx
• The Industry Standard: IDC’s top 10 tech predictions: cloud and analytics http://bit.ly/54VqYE
• Information Management: 10 Sustainability Predictions for 2010 http://bit.ly/6t02YA
• InfoWorld: 5 must-have IT management technologies for 2010 http://bit.ly/5D9LuO
• InfoWorld’s top 10 emerging enterprise technologies http://bit.ly/6vHQe1
• Intelligent Enterprise Top Stories of 2009 http://bit.ly/77aW1l
• Intelligent Enterprise: What’s in Store for SaaS in 2010?  http://bit.ly/5LWC3Q
• Internet Evolution – CIOs Focus on a Cloud-Filled Future http://bit.ly/5Iyxhd
• Network World: 2009 – A look back  http://bit.ly/5joGx9
• PC World: Top 10 Tech Stories of the Decade  http://bit.ly/8UzESJ

• RedMonk: James Governor’s Monkchips » 20 RedMonk Predictions for 2010 http://bit.ly/87LZsC
• RedMonk: James Governor’s Monkchips » What’s in store for 2010? 9 Trends, Quick Take http://bit.ly/5by5a0
• RedMonk » What’s in Store for 2010? A Few Predictions http://bit.ly/7Qdkc2

• Reuters: The top 10 security threats of 2009 http://bit.ly/8CL6HG
• SearchCRM.com: Expert CRM predictions for 2010 http://bit.ly/8nV5d8

• SearchDataCenter.com: The top data center 2010 trends http://bit.ly/7Z44BZ

• Software as Services | ZDNet.com: Cloud delusions at the turn of the decade http://bit.ly/7014fL
• Tekrati Research News: Intelligence and Analytics Services Will Remain a Hot Area of Investment During 2010, says TBR| http://bit.ly/8zKxbb
• THINK IT Services » Key Competitive Battlefields in the Clouds in 2010 http://bit.ly/8dnVxq
• THINK IT Services » Key Challenges Facing Cloud Computing in 2010 and Beyond http://bit.ly/6rpPko
• THINK IT Services » Thinking About the Decade Past http://bit.ly/6jIpdB
• THINK IT Services » A SaaS/Cloud Computing Scorecard for 2009 http://bit.ly/60JviN

• Virtualization Review: 2010 a Boom Year for Cloud Computing? http://bit.ly/8jYEUK

• Ray Wang: 10 Cloud and SaaS Apps Strategies For 2010 http://bit.ly/4Cg0Hn
• The Wisdom of Clouds – CNET News: Seven businesses to look out for in 2010 http://bit.ly/8iMoqe
• Yankee Group 2010 Predictions: From Crisis Comes Opportunity | Business Wire http://bit.ly/6oCUeu

Below is my initial post, which contains many more predictions:

Now that we’re really gearing up for 2010 and the dawn of new decade, and since enterprise mashup dashboards and business intelligence are often cited as important IT initiatives for 2010, I thought it would be good to at least have a text mashup dashboard of the many IT predictions that are circulating, to enhance our own business intelligence.

Here are some IT predictions for 2010 that I’ve run across and found useful and insightful, in alphabetical order by author or organization:

• Nenshad Bardoliwanna: “The Top 10 Trends for 2010 in Analytics, Business Intelligence, and Performance Management.“ This is a great read from author and former CTO at SAP.
• Burton Group issued three news releases about 2010 IT predictions: for executive planning (externalization, consumerization, and democratization of IT); data management (database management, business intelligence, data governance, metrics); and IT(externalization, consumerization, globalization; cloud computing; data center transformation; social computing; wireless everything).
• Computerworld: “7 Smartphone predictions for 2010,” by Matt Hamblen. Among them: AT&T loses its iPhone exclusive deal.
• Dr. Dobb’s: “Other Voices: 8 IT Predictions for 2010,” by Jake Sorofman “2009 is a year we shouldn’t soon forget. In fact, it’s a year we ought to remember — as the year that changed enterprise IT.”
• eWeek: “IT security predictions for 2010.” “Researchers from IBM and Sophos shared their thoughts on what the security threat landscape will look like for enterprises and consumers alike in 2010. Their predictions run the gamut from threats to social networking sites to an increase in attackers targeting hosted services.”
• Forrester Research: “Cloud computing belongs on your three-year roadmap.” We get two bonus years with this post.
• Gartner’s top 10 strategic technologies for 2010: Cloud computing and advanced analytics top the list
• IDC Top 10 Predictions: “As we have for the past three decades, IDC ends the year with our outlook for the coming year in the information technology (IT) and telecommunications market. During the next 60 days, IDC will publish literally dozens of IDC Top 10 Predictions documents for 2010.” Keep checking this site for updates.
• IDG News Service, (Computerworld, Infoworld, etc.), “10 tech predictions for 2010,” by Nancy Weil: “We see modest economic recovery, e-reader buzz, new faces in old places, lots of mobile news, and more.”
• Todd Lane: My five predictions are in this post.
• Jennifer Leggio, Social Business writer for ZDNet, includes many social media predictions from luminaries such as Charlene Li and Nenshad Bardoliwanna in this post, “2010 Predictions: Will social media reach ubiquity?”
• Social Media Today: “Five Social Media Predictions for 2010,” by Joel Postman “Enterprise Social Software Applications Will Become Commonplace.”
• Trend Micro 2010 Future Threat Report: Virtualization, Cloud-Computing and a Shifting Internet Infrastructure Will Widen the Scope of Cybercrime
• Websense Security Labs Predictions for 2010: Smartphones, Windows 7, Search Engines and Legitimate Ads are Targets of Next Year’s Attacks

Also, here are links to great surveys this year by IBM and InformationWeek about the impact of business intelligence during the economic downturn, the top priorities of CIOs, and IT innovation:

• New IBM Study Uncovers Business Strategies For Weathering Economic Storm
• New IBM Study Highlights Analytics As Top Priority For Today’s CIO
• InformationWeek 500: A Year Of Relentless Innovation

I hope that this will provide plenty of reading about what may happen in IT in 2010. While you’re at it, here are some great cloud-computing companies that will continue to shine in the year ahead:

• Enterprise mashup dashboards such as mashmatrix Dashboard provide rapid, personalized development of dashboards from any web-facing data source; get a complete view of a customer or patient on one screen without having to switch between screens and applications.
• SaaS business intelligence (BI) applications from Birst and eiVia provide quick reporting and predictive analytics for decision-making.
• Enterprise relationship management solutions such as BranchIt help your business leverage relationships that colleagues may have with prospective customer or partner contacts.
• Price optimization applications from companies such as Mimiran help you avoid leaving money on the table in pricing your products or services.
• Enterprise brand management solutions from Biz360 aggregate, measure, and analyze news media and consumer opinion from print and social-media sources to yield insights that enable sales, marketing, PR, and executives to better understand their customers, competitors, influencer communities, industry trends and issues, the press, and the investment community.
• Enterprise cloud databases such as TrackVia help you quickly design and deploy cloud-based applications to solve business problems.
• Integration products from Pervasive Software and Sesame Software provide data exchange and interoperability between legacy on-premises and software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications.
• Cloud-based single sign-on systems from companies such as TriCipher provide a secure, single login for a user to access all authorized cloud-based applications.

Good luck in 2010, and may all the good predictions come true!

What are your IT predictions for 2010?  Are there any sources you would add to the above lists?